-Caveat Lector-
Afghanistan - The Last Place
On Earth For A War
By Oliver Hardy
The Sun - London
9-18-1
Afghanistan is one of the most desolate and inhospitable regions
on Earth.
So a war in Afghanistan would rely heavily on the
highly-trained,
tough teams of men from the SAS and US Special Forces.
Osama bin Laden will need to be prised from his hiding place in
a
barren terrain characterised by forbidding mountain ranges and
dotted with deep caves.
And with a stark winter fast approaching, conditions will be
extremely harsh.
Despite their superior numbers, successive armies have tried and
failed to conquer Afghanistan.
They have been beaten by the wild conditions and the tribesmen's
superior knowledge of how to survive there.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has already said Special
Forces soldiers will be at the forefront of the attack if there
is to be
a chance of getting bin Laden.
They will be assisted by a specialist unit of the SAS, called
the
Revolutionary World Warfare wing.
These men have been training in the mountains of neighbouring
Pakistan for more than five years and making secret
intelligence-gathering sorties into Afghanistan.
They have climbed to heights of 18,000ft and adapted to barren
terrain similar to south Afghanistan, where bin Laden runs his
training camps.
Ex-SAS man Tom Carew knows the tough conditions in the
mountains well.
He spent two years in Afghanistan training Mujahideen
guerrillas in
their fight against the Russian Army in the 1980s.
Tom, 47, who has just published a book, Jihad! The Secret War In
Afghanistan, said last night: "It was hard work for troops in
the
Falklands.
"But that was like a billiard table compared with the terrain in
Afghanistan. It's arid, there's hardly any cover, it's very
rocky - very
hard going.
"The winter is starting now and the nights are already getting
colder.
"At the end of this month and the beginning of October you will
start to get the rain.
"It soaks everything completely, turning tracks into quagmires.
Then it freezes. By the end of next month there will be snow
drifts
and ice.
"Forget tanks and troop carriers. The only way to get around is
by
mule or on foot."
Tom, now living in Belgium under a false identity, said the
Afghans
are a nation of warriors.
He said: "They are a proud fighting people. They are like
mountain
goats. They were born to this terrain.
"If you get caught by the Afghans then it's very bad news. I
never
saw any Russian prisoners handed back. They take them alive but
two or three days later they will be dead.
"I once saw a dead Russian who had been captured and he was
virtually unrecognisable.
"People should go to Moscow and sit down with their generals who
have some experience of fighting in Afghanistan. The British
got a
good basting in Afghanistan in the days of the Empire and so did
the Russians."
He said the tribesmen he dealt with are adept at using the local
terrain to their advantage. The same will be true of the Taliban
tribesmen, who are believed to be sheltering bin Laden.
"When you are in the valleys they place explosives on the
mountainside so when you are climbing up they explode rocks on
to you. It's deadly. They also have holes in the ground to use
as
arms dumps. They stock them with weapons and munitions from
mule trains. It allows them to travel lightly when pursued and
keep
one step ahead."
Tom said Bin Laden will have chosen his hiding place well.
He said: "Looking for him is like looking for a needle in
Wembley
Stadium.
"He will be constantly on the move. There are caves all over the
place to hide in." The barren landscape has helped the rugged
Afghani tribesman to remain undefeated in centuries of bloody
conflict.
The only Western conqueror of part of what is now Afghanistan
was Alexander The Great in the fourth century BC.
The might of the British Empire and Russia both suffered
terrible
defeats.
On both occasions the bloodthirsty war methods of the Afghan
tribesman left the invaders horrified.
Military expert Christopher Bellamy said the same torture
methods
were used on the Russians in the 1980s as perfected on the
British 100 years earlier. Bellamy, professor of military
history at
Cranfield University, said: "If they were lucky, conscripts got
the
'quick death'. They were staked out in the sun, a large piece of
skin peeled off their stomach and they were left until they
stopped
breathing.
"Officers - particularly political officers and professional
soldiers -
were often less fortunate.
"They were subjected to the 'slow death' which meant just a
small
fold of skin was removed. It was an agonisingly long time before
the end came."
http://www.thesun.co.uk/news/14039766?view=Standard
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